After I saw the orange orb UFO in the 1980s — the one that propelled me into the world of UFOs and Fortean, esoteric topics (falling down the rabbit hole) I became obsessed with the UFO; its origins, its intent, etc. What was it that I saw that night? It was all so odd; the size of the thing, the fact that it followed us, — seemed to be waiting for us — the missing time, the dreams that followed, the fear, the apathy, the telepathic communications.
I went to the local library, reading literally every book the library had on UFOs. And, on aviation. And, on debunking UFOs. Anything to do with UFOs, flying saucers, space ships, planes, unexplained phenomena. I didn’t find anything in any of the books that came close to what I saw. If I found an account of an sphere shaped craft, it wasn’t described as orange. If I came across a sighting of an orange light, well, it was red, or reddish orange, or yellowish, and small, and usually attached to a larger object. But not what I saw that night in Oregon.
I came across accounts of silver, chrome colored craft of all sizes and shapes, with lights, but not one of an orange sphere, seemingly lit from within. Furthermore, I didn’t come across any reports of orange orb sightings with all the other events I mentioned earlier: missing time, and so on.
I didn’t give up. All that searching, researching, reading, discussing, led me to the writing I do today. When I started out talking about my sighting online ten, fifteen years ago, I still hadn’t come across orange orb reports. Not at first.
But now, we are getting reports from all over the globe of orange UFOs, many which appear to be very similar to mine decades ago. Most disturbing, in many ways, was the UFO Hunters Dark Presence episode, which investigated only orange (and sometimes other colors, but always the same characteristics) orb UFOs. The similarities between the witness accounts in that episode, and my own, were startling. Finally, others reporting what I, and my husband, had experienced!
Was what I witnessed back then a prototype of what was to come decades later? Was the orange orb one of ours; a military or industrial (or combination of both; especially now a days, where corporate industry and government meld into one entity) craft? Or was it, is it, either strictly alien, or some hybrid of both alien and human forces?
Recently, I’ve been trying to access those memories of the sighting. Not only retrieving missing time, but getting the time line right. Among the other events we experienced — missing time, telepathy, etc. — Jim (my spouse who also saw the object) and I cannot to this day agree on when it happened! Sounds almost ridiculous, but there it is. Screen memories are clearly a part of this experience. I insist — I know! — we were living in our house on Friendly St., just off Lorane Highway, when we saw the orb. I remember details: turning the corner off the highway to the house, watching the orb stop still above the house across the street before dropping down behind the house, feeling oddly energetic and hyper, walking to the phone, picking up the receiver (I remember the color of the phone; it was beige) asking Jim who I should I call to ask about unusual craft reports, the airport, the police? then deciding against it, hanging up the phone. . . then I walked over to the front door, my hand on the knob, announcing I was going to go outside and look for the orb, but not being able to move, I just stood there for a few moments before deciding against it. I was experiencing an odd combination of elation and apprehensiveness.
Jim remembers it differently; very differently. He remembers that I saw the orb during the daylight, on our way out to our friends. I have no such memory. None. He remembers our seeing it at night, on the way back, but we were not, he insists, living in the house on Friendly St., but in our apartment on Hilyard. (We later moved to the Friendly St. house after we lived in the apartment.) I do not remember the sighting like this at all.
So who’s right? We both insist our version is the correct one. And more details came out during a recent conversation on Bill and Nancy Birnes Future Theater podcast.
There are lots of reports of orange orbs now (the orange Chinese or Asian lanterns excluded) coming in from all over the world. Google something like “orange orb UFOs” and you’ll find all kinds of accounts. Occasionally people send me their sightings of orange orbs:
I saw an Orange orb in 1983, It was hovering above tree tops and was 20 feet in diameter. I reported it it to N.U.F.O.R.C. Just saw your website, Not sure if you are poking fun at the orb sightings or what? My sighting has frustrated me since I saw it, I believe I know what it was now and it is nothing like people are saying it is. It is real and it is everywhere.
1983; the decade we saw our orb.
Here’s an account from a witness in Australia. In his first email, he wrote that he had submitted his sighting to a well known (unnamed) UFO organization, but never received a response, so, as he put it, “up your [their] nose with a rubber hose.” I asked him if he’d mind sharing more of his story and he provided the following:
I don’t mind, but the story may well convince you that I’m a bit nutty. Maybe I am. I’ll let you decide:
I’ve had an interest in UFOs for about 20 years now, although my
initial interest did not come from any personal experiences. I think
the seed was planted by my Godmother’s husband, who used to tell my
disbelieving parents stories about UFO sightings back in the 1960s
when I was a child, and his stories fascinated me, but I forgot all
about that stuff until I read Timothy Good’s “Above Top Secret” many
years later.Any way, about 10 years ago, after reading numerous witness accounts
of alien abductions, the whole thing started to really creep me out,
especially when lying in bed in the middle of the night. My fear
levels kept rising over a 2 week period and (this is a bit
embarrassing) I started talking out-loud in my room and house,
basically saying things like “How can you do such horrible things to
people!?” etc, and there was a lot of very strong emotion behind what
I was saying. I also said things like “Instead of inducing unbearable
terror in your victims, why can’t you make contact with people in
daylight and in a gentle/gradual fashion, instead of scaring the crap
out of them in the middle of the night?” I did not have any
expectations that any one was listening to what I was saying. I was
just ranting to get it out of my system, I suppose.At the time, I was working in a metal fabrication factory which
employed about a 100 people. I had worked there for about 8 years, so I had a very good understanding of what went on there and how things operated. After about 2 weeks of my night terrors and talking to
myself, I was working at a bench, grinding some metal with an angle
grinder, so I had safety glasses and ear muffs on, when I suddenly saw
a roughly circular orange reflection off a nearby metal wall moving
from my right to my left. The wall was about 5 meters away from me
and there was a length of shelving between me and the wall, so I could
not see the lower part of the wall. The orange reflection appeared
between 3 and 4 meters above the ground and moved at a steady speed of about 10 mph in a direction which corresponded with entry through the big main front roller door and out toward the rear smaller roller door, both of which were open. I just stood there watching this glow go past me with out moving. It wasn’t till after it had disappeared, that I began wondering what it was. The source of the light was obscured by the shelving I described earlier.At this point, based on what I’ve written, I can understand that from
the perspective of a person reading this, it would be quite logical to
think that it could have been any number of mundane things which
caused the moving reflection which I described. If I had not worked
there for as long as I did, I would agree with such a skeptical
conclusion. This was not a “drive through” area for vehicles. We did
have a fork truck which was used in that area and it had an amber
safety light on top, so obviously that was my first thought. However,
when I went around the shelving to the area where the light had passed through, the fork truck was parked, it was a cool day, and its exhaust pipe was the same temperature as my work bench, which means that it had not been used for quite some time. Later, I also stood in the same spot as when I’d seen the glow and observed the wall for reflective light from the fork truck as it drove down the passage, but I could not see the slightest bit of light reflecting from the wall asit drove by. There were no other sources of mobile orange illumination in the factory. Also, please note that although 10 mph does not sound like a high rate of speed, to pass through the area I
am describing at such a velocity with objects jutting out and people
coming into the area from obscured entry points, it would have been
very reckless and dangerous to drive any sort of vehicle through that
area at anywhere near that speed.Still not very impressive, but wait! There’s more! 🙂 The factory
is normally full of workmen, working at their benches and operating
machinery. The only time that the shop floor was devoid of human
activity was when the factory was shut for the night, or if the boss
called a general staff meeting. Even during lunch breaks you would
have some individuals hanging around. It was late morning/early
afternoon, not a break period, and no staff meetings had been called.
The place should have been a hive of activity (and had been before I
noticed the light). My first reaction after running out from behind
my bench to the area where the light had been was to ask the first
person I saw if they had seen any unusual lights a few seconds ago; it
would have been very hard not to have noticed as it was quite bright,
but when I looked around the workshop… there was no one there! I
ran to the fenced off outdoor area at the back, because guys would
often sneak off in that direction to have a cigarette, but that was
deserted as well. I ran back into the factory and it was completely
empty. This was very unusual, and in my 8 years of working there I’d
never seen it like that during work hours as described above. About a
minute after that 2 people walked out of the office area talking to
each other, then a few more walked in from another entrance, and some more from another direction, etc, and within about 2 minutes the place was full of people working away as if nothing had happened. Now that was really weird.Several days later, I was standing with a few other workers just
outside the main front roller door, looking out across the street,
when I looked to my right (for no particular reason), and as I did so,
for a split second I clearly saw a luminous orange ball hanging low in
the sky, just above a factory roof about a hundred meters away. The
thing is, it had these rather long “spikes” of light sticking out of
it in all directions. The day was totally overcast and grey. I
checked to see if there were any sources of light which may have
caused an after-image in my eye as I looked to the right, but there
was nothing, just the dull diffused light from the heavily overcast
sky. I then looked left and right at the people standing next to me
but they did not seem to have noticed any thing, so I kept my mouth
shut.Not long after these puzzling experiences I began to feel much calmer
at night and I’ve not had any similar episodes since.Make of it what you will.
Sincerely,
[Name withheld]
From Tasmania:
. . . I am not sure when but some time in 2002 it may have been in the spring going into summer as we did not have a fire going from memory, we where sleeping soundly and as i remember it was a clear night again I am not sure what time it was but at a guess about between one and three in the morning .
I awoke very suddenly and to my left about two meters from me there was this orange round orb or ball shape, it was glowing and really I have never seen anything so amazing in all my life it hung stable about 300mm – 400mm above the hard wood floor and I don’t know really how to describe it only to say it seemed to be 3 D and layered it looked like it had a lighter center lighter than the outside , the size was about the size of a basket ball maybe a bit larger, and it stayed there for about ten minutes I guess .
The weird thing was I tyred to shake my partner awake but she just moaned and didn’t wake up at all ,I was saying sonya look at this comon get up but she didn’t, I got up and walked around it and I must say I had a really weird feeling of peace like nothing I have ever experienced before and well it was beautiful like plasma ,it had me in a bit of a trance just looking at it and not believing what I was seeing then it slowly began to diminish and get smaller and fade down to the size of a tennis ball and then it was gone. So I just don’t know to this day what it was but I know what I saw that night and it was real, I have told my wife what I saw but she just won’t have a bar of it and can’t believe me apart from her I have told no one about this, do you know what it may have been. Many thanks
[Name withheld]
This report and my own sighting share some similarities; the “basket ball sized” orb, (also reported in the UFO Hunters <u>Dark Presence</u> episode,) the “lit from within” appearance, his partner sleeping throughout the experience (after our sighting I had intense dreams of beams of brilliant white light that woke me up; frightened, turning on all the lights and radio, TV, I couldn’t wake Jim up through any of this!)
There are similarities and differences in these orb accounts; are they of the same object, variations of the same, something completely different? Two things for certain: the orange orbs share many characteristics of the UFO phenomena, and, there are many accounts of orange orb UFOs, proving the orange orb phenomena is not an isolated event.